Monday, December 19, 2011

Minecraft - Back at it

So after playing Skyrim for a month, I've decided to dive back into Minecraft, what in my opinion is one of the greatest games ever made. It may not be for everyone, but the gameplay for me is just too good that I keep coming back with it feeling like a fresh experience over and over again.

This time around I'm just playing, not doing the Let's Play thing, I could again at some point but for now I'm just playing and enjoying it. And the way I'm playing it on my 1.0 world there are easy entry points if I want to. I've gone back to my old rule set of modified hardcore where upon death I have to randomly spawn myself in the world and essentially start over. By doing this it means that my world will endlessly grow as I play and explore, not to mention that I've have castles spring up around the world that will give the world a nice feel. Who knows one day I could use the world as a multiplayer world, that would be kind of neat. I'm only running one mod and that is Millinare, it's a fantastic mod that adds villages to the game (yes there are villages in the normal game, but... well yeah.)

In my new world I've set up shop in a nice plane area, it's flat and has a huge cave system under it. Not to mention that I found a skeleton spawner within a short walk from my castle, now that is luck! Of course arrows aren't as great as they used to be, but they are still useful for sure. I'd be curious to see the monsters online and see if they still have the melee delay that they used to, which meant that you had to use a bow to fight them. Anyway my castle is taking shape, I have my wheat farm, I've also set up a nice ranch of cows for limitless steak. I'm in the process of making a wall around the perimeter of the castle so that it will truly be a castle. The area around the castle is lit up with hundreds of torches, it's so well lit that I am even able to do construction at night, picking off the random mob that makes it through the lights.

I don't really care about the changes that have been made to combat, normally I'll find a mob let them run up to me and I'll just beat them to death, like I used to. Skeletons are a little more interesting since I have to close the ground on them, dealing with cliffs and those guys can be interesting. So far I haven't taken on any Endermen, I know they hit hard and take a lot of hits so I'm just avoiding them for now until I get my diamond sword. Speaking of diamonds, they are a bitch to find now, I haven't found one yet in this map, but in fairness I haven't gone deep enough long enough yet. I really want to get that diamond pick and have enough left over for my enchanting table, I'm already level 17 so I can't wait to use the system and see what I get. The fact that you lose levels when you do it is kind of lame, but I guess there should be some sort of balancing cost. My son and I did it on our peaceful map with his level 1 character and it's kind of neat, so I'm looking forward to it.

The goal this time, is just to progress and see where it takes me. If I end up killing the Ender Dragon all power to me, but I don't really think that I will. But that will be the path that I'm on, eventually I'll get to that point one way or another. Which brings me back to why I really love this game, I can finish it, or I can just choose to ignore it and do my own thing. I like having a little bit of structure just as much as I like having limitless freedom. And Skyrim is a great game, with tons of freedom and a great story that you can just immerse yourself in, I highly recommend it. But while it might be the best game of 2011, Minecraft to me is one of the best of all time, which is why after 60+ hours of Skyrim, I'm back to Minecraft.